"I had Jim pack the all-white shotgun," she told him.
"Shucks, why not just have him threaten to sit on me?" asked Walt. He
kissed her again.
"Now," she said after an appropriate and pleasant interval, "just what
was my 'thought for the week'?"
"Kingman," he said, his forehead creasing in a frown.
"Kingman?"
"We've no corner on brains," said Walt. "Anybody tinkering with these
energy tubes might easily devise the same thing. Kingman's immediate
thought would be to freeze us out, I betcha."
Walt kissed her again and then let her go, "Let's do some juggling with
figures," he said.
"What kind of?"
"The Laws of Probability aided by a bit of sheer guesswork and some
shrewd evaluation of the barrister's mind."
Christine smiled. "You can speak plainer than that," she said.
"I know," he replied, reaching for his bag of gear, "but there's a lady
present."
"You forget that the lady thought of it," Christine pointed out. "So
let's go and find the--barrister."
"It ought to show, though," observed Walt. "And yet, my lady, we can
check whether there has been cross-duggery at the skull-roads by making
a brief observation along here somewhere."
"How?"
"Well, about fifty yards up this corridor there is a wall-thermostat."
"You think that if Kingman were trying to chill-off the place, he'd
have bollixed the thermostats so they can't heat up the place and
compensate?"
Walt nodded. "He'd do it, not knowing that we had all the near-by
circuits shut off for our own experiment, no doubt."
"You don't suppose Kingman knew about this idea and decided to add to
the general effect?" asked Christine.
Walt shook his head. "He'd assume that someone would be rambling up
here off and on to look at the works. He'd automatically choose another
place if he thought we had this one under observation."
Walt stopped at the thermostat and with a screwdriver he removed the
face of the instrument. He reached down into his tool-pocket and took
out a long, slender pair of tweezers. He probed in the depths of the
thermostat and come out with a tiny square of paper.
He held it up for Christine to see.
"Stickum on one side held it until the contacts closed," he said. "Then
it made a darned good insulator. Betcha this slip of paper came from
Terran Electric!"
"Now what?" asked Christine.
"I'm going to call Don," said Walt. "Iffen and providen we can find a
live jack." He took a handset from his kit of tools and plugged it into
the jack below the thermostat. He jiggled a tiny switch and pressed
a little red button, and after a full three minutes, he said "Damn,"
under his breath and dropped the handset back into his tool kit.
"Nobody's paying much attention to the telephone from this section of
Venus Equilateral any more," he said. "There's a live one in the cold
room, though. Let's take a look around first."
"Which way?"
Walt thought for a moment. "We set the cold room about one-third of
the way from the North End because it was as far from the rest of the
station's operating and living section as possible while commensurable
with being reasonably close to the labs," he said. "We're not very
far--perhaps a hundred yards from the axis. We're about a mile from the
North End.
"Now, if I were Kingman, I'd set up shop in some place as far from the
operating section as possible commensurable with an out of the way
place--and definitely far from the laboratories. Then I'd select a
place as far from me as I could get without too much danger of having
the effect detected."
Christine nodded. "If Venus Equilateral were a cube, you'd take one
corner and chill off the opposite corner."
"Venus Equilateral is a cylinder, and the skin is filled with people.
However, you can set up an equation in differential calculus that will
give you two spots as far from one another as possible with the least
danger of detection from the ends or skin of a cylinder. The answer
will give you two toroidal volumes located inside of the cylinder. You
set your workshop in one and start the chill-off in the other--and
right across the center from you."
"And?" prompted Christine with a smile.
"We used the same equation to locate the least dangerous place.
Predicated on the theory that if the personnel need be protected from
the danger area as much as the danger area need be concealed from
people, we can assume the use of the same constants. Now, since by
sheer coincidence Markus the Kingman selected a spot in the toroid that
we also selected, it narrows our search considerably."
"In other words, we chase down the length of the station, cross the
axis, and knock on Kingman's door."
"Right," said Walt.
And being firmly convinced that mixing pleasure with business often
makes the business less objectionable, Walt kissed Christine once more
before they started toward the place where they expected to find their
troublemaker.
* * * * *
"About here," said Walt, looking up at a smooth bulkhead.
"How are we going to find him?" asked Christine. The corridor was
long and die-straight, but both walls were sheer for thirty feet and
unbroken.
"Look, I guess," said Walt, uncertainly. "I'm not too familiar with
this section of the station. When I was first here--many years ago--I
spent a lot of spare time roaming and exploring these seldom-used
corridors. But my Boy Scout hatchet wouldn't cut trail-blazes on the
steel walls."
He laughed a bit thoughtfully, and then he put his hands to his mouth,
cupping them like a megaphone, and he yelled:
"Hey! Kingman! We're on to you!"
"But what good will that do?" asked Christine doubtfully.
"Might scare him into action," said Walt. "Easiest way to shoot
pa'tridge is to flush it into the open. Otherwise you might walk over a
nest and never see it. I--Holy Grease!"
A four foot section of the wall beside them flashed into nothingness
with neither sound nor light nor motion. It just disappeared. And as
they goggled at the vacant square, an ugly round circle glinted in the
light and a sourly-familiar voice invited them in--or else!
"Well," said Walt Franks, exhaling deeply. "If it isn't Our Legal Lamp
himself!"